While most eyes were on DeChambeau at the start of the round, Burns managed to steal the spotlight from his playing partner with a brilliant display of skill and control.<\/p>\n
Burns shot a record-equalling 62 in Friday’s second round and quickly picked up where he left off with four birdies on the front nine.<\/p>\n
A bogey on the ninth tempered his progress, but he picked up two more shots at 14 and 17 to take command.<\/p>\n
Burns’ total of 127 shots from rounds two and three (62, 65) is the lowest total across any two rounds in men’s major championship history.<\/p>\n
The two-time US Ryder Cup player going on to win his first major would be another extraordinary storyline.<\/p>\n
Burns, who finished runner-up at last month’s US Open, was not even planning to play at Birkdale as it clashed with the due date of his second child.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old thought he had “zero per-cent” of going to Merseyside, but when his second child, daughter Belle, arrived on 3 July – almost a fortnight early – his wife Caroline persuaded him to play.<\/p>\n
The paternal joy has allowed Burns to play freely and he believes he has nothing to lose on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to have to go out and execute,” said Burns, who goes out with Fox at 14:20 BST. <\/p>\n
“I know that I can accept the outcome, and life’s going to move on. I’ll get to go home and see my family.<\/p>\n
“I hope I’m taking some hardware with me, but if I’m not, that’s fine too.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While most eyes were on DeChambeau at the start of the round, Burns managed to steal the spotlight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-698975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}